uit close to him and started through with
her. Peter heard him say, "They won't hurt you, Miss Negley." And Miss
Negley, in the brisk nasal intonation of a Northern woman, replied: "Oh,
I'm not afraid. We waste a lot of sympathy on them back home, but when
you see them--"

At that moment Peter heard a cry in his ears and felt arms thrown about
his neck. He looked down and saw his mother, Caroline Siner, looking up
into his face and weeping with the general emotion of the negroes and
this joy of her own. Caroline had changed since Peter last saw her. Her
eyes were a little more wrinkled, her kinky hair was thinner and very
gray.

Something warm and melting moved in Peter Siner's breast. He caressed
his mother and murmured incoherently, as had Tump Pack. Presently the
master of the launch came by, and touched the old negress, not ungently,
with the end of a spike-pole.

"You'll have to move, Aunt Ca'line," he said. "We're goin' to get the
freight off now."

The black woman paused in her weeping. "Yes, Mass' Bob," she said, and
she and Peter moved off of the launch onto the wharf-boat.

The Knights and Ladies of Tabor were already up the river bank with
their hero. Peter and his mother were left alone. Now they walked around
the guards of the wharf-boat to the bank, holding each other's arms
closely. As they went, Peter kept looking down at his old black mother,
with a growing tenderness. She was so worn and heavy! He recognized the
very dress she wore, an old black silk which she had "washed out" for
Miss Patti Brownell when he was a boy. It had been then, it was now, her
best dress. During the years the old negress had registered her
increasing bulk by letting out seams and putting in panels. Some of the
panels did not agree with the original fabric either in color or in
texture and now the seams were stretching again and threatening a rip.
Peter's own immaculate clothes reproached him, and he wondered for the
hundredth, or for the thousandth time how his mother had obtained
certain remittances which she had forwarded him during his college
years.

As Peter and his mother crept up the bank of the river, stopping
occasionally to let the old negress rest, his impression of the meanness
and shabbiness of the whole village grew. From the top of the bank the
single business street ran straight back from the river. It was stony in
places, muddy in places, strewn with goods-boxes, broken planking,
excelsior, and straw t